Cabin Fever
by raining-down-hearts
Summary: In which a nice, relaxing ski trip goes terribly, terribly wrong.


Maka looked tired, and honestly Soul didn't blame her. This whole graduation trip had been a cool idea, and it had been very nice of Spirit and Lord Death to pay for it— so nice that Soul was still wondering uneasily what the undoubtedly dire cost of owing a favor to Spirit Albarn would be— but three days crammed in a cabin with literally everyone was exhausting. Skiiing was fun, the mountains and the snow were pretty, the hot tub had been admittedly pretty badass, but he was worn out and totally ready to get home and crash.

He was currently slouched on the weirdly goose-patterned couch, sipping hot chocolate and watching Black Star engaged in a staring contest with the stuffed moose head mounted over the fireplace. It was very ferocious and passionate, if a bit one sided.

"When's our shuttle to the airport coming?" he asked Maka, for the tenth time.

She actually hissed at him, and he leaned back; apparently her temper was more worn down than he'd realized at first. "Any time now, okay! God!"

"Okay, okay, sorry!" He subsided, keeping a wary eye out for retaliatory pinches. Black Star decided he'd won his staring contest, or something, because he suddenly yodeled and did a double backflip, landing on his hands. Something cracked audibly as he knocked over a side table, and Soul craned his neck to see; Black Star's destruction was always interesting, plus, even better, anything he broke in the ski resort's cabin would be charged to Spirit. Hopefully it was some antique vase or something else super expensive. Soul rubbed his hands together and cackled quietly.

"The phone? Really?" Maka demanded, fists clenching. Black Star immediately hand-walked away from her, having finally learned some amount of caution after years and years of being around her and her runaway temper. "You broke the phone, god, you're like a two year old! I'd rather babysit Shelley than you!"

Black Star just snorted and remained upside down, planting his feet on the wall irreverently. "Things break when you're having fun. Not that you'd know anything about fun, bookworm."

Maka breathed fire and dived at him. Apparently Black Star hadn't learned_ that_ much caution. Soul put his head in his hands and prayed for the quick arrival of the blessed resort bus that would take him far, far away from this madness and the horrifying sound of Black Star's snoring at night.

Liz materialized in the doorway of the hall leading to the bedrooms and blinked at the carnage currently being wreaked by Black Star and Maka. "So she yells at him for breaking something and then she tries to break his bones?" she muttered, smoothly dodging the remnants of the phone as they went sailing past her. "Seems hypocritical."

"Are you going to smoke?" Soul said desperately, bounding to his feet and yanking on his parka. "I'll come with you, I wanna watch for that bus."

She shrugged and fluffed her hair. "Sure. Damn thing's late."

"Yeah." He followed her outside, dodging a puddle of Black Star's blood, and stood a little ways off from her, staring hopefully down the white-dusted road winding down the mountain.

"Out here in the cold, your breath makes you look like a smoker too," she said cannily. He hummed. Liz was constantly trying to recruit someone else to join her in her nicotine addiction so she didn't have to always step outside alone.

"They really are late," he said miserably after a little while, wincing as something crashed inside the cabin.

Liz frowned, lifted a hand to push her hood back, and peered up into the sky. "It's snowing again, too, fuck me sideways. We better not have to stay here another damn night, Kid's driving me nuts. At least at home I have like, a hundred rooms to hide from him in."

"Do you ever say anything without cursing?" he asked idly, trying to use the Jedi mind powers he somehow always seemed to develop when drunk to conjure up the missing escape bus.

"Nope. I'm a fucking free spirit. Don't censor me, shark face."

"Gonna enjoy seeing the wrinkles you get from smoking all these years."

"I'm gonna staple you to a tree and use you for target practice one of these days." She flicked her cigarette into the snow and sent the empty road a final, irritated glower. "Bet you anything we're stuck here another damn night," she proclaimed dourly before heading back inside.

Watching the rapidly increasing snowfall spiral ominously down, Soul had the horrible, creeping feeling that she was right.

— — — — — — — — — — —

It wasn't until they were all crowded around the window five hours later, squinting through the gathering dark at the road— now entirely invisible under the snow deposited by what was now a raging blizzard— that Pattie voiced what they were all trying so hard not to accept.

"I don't think the bus is coming," she said mournfully, smashing her nose flat up against the window and making incredibly realistic pig noises.

"Liz, kindly move a foot to the right to even up our symmetry. Please stop pulling my hair. Pattie, I believe you're correct."

"I hate everyone and everything," Liz moaned quietly, sagging against the log wall.

Kid frowned at her. "We were arranged so perfectly around the window. Could you please move to the right and stand up straight?"

Her left eye twitched slightly. Soul slid a little bit away. "Fuck you. Talk to me about symmetry one more time and I'll chop off your dick and sew it onto your arm and ruin your symmetry forever!"

"Liz, wow, I gotta take lessons from you in how to threaten enemies," Black Star said appreciatively, sliding a hand down Tsubaki's leg with a very un-ninja lack of stealth.

Maka sighed gustily, rubbed her temples, and grabbed Tsubaki's hand. "Can you two horndogs stop for like, five seconds and help me make dinner?"

Silence fell. "Oh. Uh, we don't have much food left, do we?" Soul said tragically, regarding his stomach sadly as it gurgled. Pattie stared pointedly at his stomach and started making her pig noises again.

Maka, ever the level-headed and logical, leaped into action. "I'll inventory what's left, Tsubaki, you're pretty much the only one who can cook, come help me. We'll ration it out."

Black Star was immediately in her face, smooshing his nose against hers threateningly. "You're gonna tell me I can't eat when I'm hungry? Gods don't deal well with hunger."

She shoved him away and threw a pillow at him with such furious strength that Soul was fairly sure he heard a bang as it broke the sound barrier. "Yes, you idiot, because there are seven of us and it's like really snowing out there and I highly doubt the bus will be able to make it all the way up here for a while. At least tonight."

Black Star only edged closer again, drooling slightly and eyeing the kitchen anxiously. "But— but food?"

She scowled and cranked his nipple with lightning-quick lethality that Soul was all too familiar with; Black Star went white, made a sound like a drunken frog and collapsed onto the ground, twitching. "You'll eat what I tell you you can eat!" Maka roared.

Tsubaki dragged her away desperately. "Come on, come on, let's see what we've got…" They disappeared into the kitchen and everyone sighed simultaneously in relief. In close quarters, Maka and Black Star's traditional rivalry had evolved— or maybe mutated— into some kind of all-out, nuclear, bloody war.

"Grit your teeth and ride it out and start wearing really thick sweatshirts around her," Soul advised Black Star, who was cross-eyed and clutching his abused nipple desperately.

"This is not an ideal situation," Kid said, looking a little wild eyed. "I'm finding it a tad difficult to handle being in such constant close proximity with Liz and Pattie."

All the men nodded together in simultaneous despair. Liz only gritted her teeth at Kid and reached into her purse, rummaging around; the horrified squawk she let out a moment later was somewhere between a kicked chicken and a deflating balloon. Everyone turned to her sharply.

She held up her Playboy lighter with one shaky hand, still gazing into the depths of her purse. "I— I have a lighter but I— I'm out of cigarettes," she whispered. Soul blanched and Pattie crawled underneath a table. Somewhere, rivers ran red with blood, and a swarm of locusts descended on the world.

Kid, however, was apparently made of stronger stuff than Soul, who'd joined Pattie beneath the table. "Elizabeth," Kid began rather pompously. "You know how I feel about your smoking. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity to kick the habit. You know, cold turkey? It seems likely that we'll be here for at least another day while it's storming, and-"

Liz took a page from Maka's book and twisted both his nipples savagely before planting her foot on his chest and pinning him to the wall. She flicked her lighter on and held it in front of his face, baring her teeth.

"I'm scared," Pattie whispered, covering her head.

"Don't look," said Soul, cringing. "It'll all be over soon." Would Lord Death still pay for half this vacation if they brought his son home in pieces?

"I'm going to singe off one of your eyebrows. One!" Liz said wildly, waving her lighter.

Kid quailed visibly. "Oh— oh, you— you wouldn't do that to me-"

"I absolutely would and I would enjoy every single second of it, you delightfully flammable idiot," Liz bellowed. The walls of the cabin shook. A sheet of snow fell from the roof with an audible fwump. Soul covered Pattie's eyes with his hand and promptly converted just so he could pray not to die.

"I'll buy you a carton as soon as we get out of here," Kid bargained, gulping and trembling.

Liz squinted at him narrowly, still waving her lighter under his nose. "Three. Menthols."

"Yes! Yes, absolutely, just please, by the grace of Eight, leave my eyebrows intact-"

"Fine." She let him go with a final intimidating glare and he slid bonelessly to the ground, stroking his eyebrows in a panicky way and murmuring reassurances to them.

It took fifteen minutes before Liz stopped whispering about vengeance and punishment, and Soul and Pattie felt safe coming out from under the table.

— — — — — — — — — — —

Maka was halfway through washing the dishes from dinner, and one third of the way through her scheduled daily ranting to Tsubaki about Soul and his stupid boy hormones and weird glove fetishes, when Pattie appeared in the kitchen doorway, radiating such powerful distress that the plant on the windowsill wilted.

"My giraffe," she said.

"What?" asked Maka, entirely confused.

"My giraffe," Pattie said again, with more baleful emphasis, digging her slender fingers into the doorframe until it creaked.

"Your— your stuffed giraffe?" Tsubaki said hesitantly.

"I. Want. Mister. Spots," said Pattie, showing every single one of her teeth in an aggressive expression that was totally at odds with her bunny-print pajamas and fluffy ladybug slippers.

"It's been three nights already that you've slept alone, do you really need him tonight?" Maka said reasonably, wiping a plate.

"YES," Pattie howled, dropping to her knees to wail dramatically at the ceiling. "Yes I do! I want Mister Spots! I can't sleep without him!"

"Are you trying to tell me you haven't slept for three days?" Maka said curiously. Tsubaki, slightly wiser, started to quail at the thought of what sort of cataclysmic damage a sleep-deprived Pattie Thompson could do.

Pattie fixed them with one red-rimmed eye. "I want Mister Spots," she shrieked, rattling the windows.

"Kiiiiid," Tsubaki called nervously, cowering against the sink.

Maka was braver. She approached Pattie cautiously, holding one hand out flat, the way one would edge up to an anxious horse. "It's okay— we'll find you something to cuddle with tonight-"

"SPOTS," Pattie howled, putting her fist through the microwave and simultaneously kicking the refrigerator door nearly off in a really incredible display of flexibility and coordination. Kid burst in, anxiously adjusting his skull-shaped bolo tie.

"Patricia Thompson! Stop that this instant!" he ordered, with godly volume that blew out the window of the oven. Tsubaki surveyed the decimated remnants of the kitchen sadly.

"We had better not be snowed in here too long," Maka muttered, watching Kid shake Pattie bodily and pretending, for the sake of her remaining sanity, that she didn't see Tsubaki sneaking the whipped cream out of the refrigerator.

"I'm sure they'll make it up the mountain tomorrow," Tsubaki said soothingly. "I, ah, I've got to go… make sure Black Star isn't smashing any more phones."

Maka regarded her so-called friend grimly. "Could you be any more obvious, Tsu? You've got half the kitchen under your shirt. Black Star's going to end up stuck to the bed and dead of a sugar high. You might as well take our last bottle of fucking maple syrup, too."

Tsubaki brightened and did so, winking broadly. "What a wonderful idea! You're really stepping up your game, Maka, that's very creative. I'm sure Soul's very happy." She trotted out of the kitchen, humming, arms loaded down with condiments and with a vaguely deranged look in her eye.

Soul, who'd finally worked up enough courage to come investigate the chaos, dodged her as she left and blinked as he laid eyes on Kid, who was still shaking a rather feral-looking Pattie, trying to force her to cuddle with a 'beautifully symmetrical' watermelon instead of the absent Mister Spots. "What's Tsubaki talking about, creative and I'm happy?"

Maka turned as red as the innards of the watermelon, which Pattie had just smashed over Kid's head. "Nothingnoideadunno." But then she shot him a speculative glance out of the corner of one eye and held up a bottle of ketchup. "How do you… feel about this, Soul?"

"The… the ketchup?" he asked uneasily, picking a stray watermelon seed off his face.

"Yeah."

"I— it's, ah, good on burgers?"

She frowned like he'd given the wrong answer or something. "No, I mean, how do you feel about it?" Suddenly she squeezed a drab of it out onto her arm and licked it off slowly, holding eye contact the entire time. "What about now?" she said hopefully when she was done.

"I— uh— are you… what the hell are you talking about?" he said haplessly. Her fingers did their telltale nipple-seeking twitch and he ran.

Calmly holding Pattie by the ear, Kid turned to Maka, peering at her from beneath the tattered rind of the watermelon still perched on his head. "Ketchup! Really, Maka," he said disapprovingly.

She snarled. "What? If Tsubaki thinks I'm not as creative as her and that freak Black Star she's got another thing coming! I've never let her beat me and I won't start now!"

Kid shook his head sadly and pressed a spatula into Pattie's arms; she appeared to like this better than the watermelon and began cooing at it. "This isn't going to end well," he observed. Maka only sniffed at him and turned to begin raiding the battered refrigerator.

— — — — — — — — — — —

"So what's wrong with Soul, eh?" Black Star said the next morning, bouncing in circles around Maka and waggling his eyebrows so fast they were blue blurs, kicking snow up everywhere.

"How much sugar did Tsubaki let you have last night?" Maka said irritably. She was gamely attempting to keep watch for the missing resort shuttle, but long hours of nothing had frayed her temper, which was already short after she'd been forced to eat her morning pancakes dry.

Black Star snickered and started cartwheeling through the fresh snow. "All the sugar I want whenever I want it, baby, because I'm a god and anyway she does this thing with whipped cream and-"

"Go away," Maka screamed, trying to ignore the sight of Soul, sitting on the steps of the cabin with his arms wrapped around himself, rocking back and forth slowly and occasionally lifting a trembling hand to touch the ketchup stains in his white hair.

Black Star only cackled louder and pelted her with a rock-hard snowball.

She gave a harpy shriek that echoed through the mountains in a faint symphony of murderous intent and began flinging snowballs back at him with lethal machine-gun speed. He darted around the corner of the cabin and she scrambled onto the roof, stomping hard, and grinned in wicked satisfaction when a giant snowdrift fell off the roof and landed right on top of him.

"Ow, dammit, Maka!" he sputtered, finally popping up like a daisy from the snow a few minutes later. Then he went still, wary, all the ninja instincts that he'd honed over years of battle telling him that something was very, very dangerous.

"I'm so tired of you," came a low, feminine snarl from behind him, and then he was flying through the air with a mouth full of snow and pine needles.

Soul, finally escaping his waking nightmares of Maka trying to theatrically out-moan Tsubaki through the cabin walls, came rudely to his senses when a stray snowball pelted him in the shoulder. He burst inside, startling Liz and Pattie so bad that they nearly toppled off the couch. Pattie began to pet her spatula comfortingly.

"Is your shoulder broken? That's terribly asymmetrical," Kid mumbled, his eyes doing the weird golden swirling thing they did when he was upset.

Soul flailed as much as he possibly could with one good arm. "Probably, but World War III just started outside and they've already taken out one innocent pine tree and I'm sort of afraid they're going to avalanche us all to death any moment and-"

Before anyone could really react, the war cries outside came closer, then the roof gave way and Black Star crashed through, along with a good deal of snow and a red-faced, bellowing Maka, who was wielding a five-foot pine bough with demonic skill.

The bus didn't show up for the rest of that day, either, and despite their efforts to patch the hole in the roof with stray bits of cabin furniture, they all still ended up huddled around the fireplace that night, grimly watching snowflakes filter down from the half-covered hole.

"At least we knocked down those trees! That's, like, firewood for a month all ready to go," Black Star said in a pitiable attempt at self-defense, nursing his two splendid black eyes.

Liz began brandishing a poker at him, hissing through clenched teeth like an angry goose. Kid deftly plucked the poker from her hands before things could get bloody, handed it to Pattie to serve as a friend for Mr. Flippy the spatula, and said, "I quite like those black eyes you gave Black Star, Maka, very even and uniform in size." Maka looked rather proud; Black Star began to sulk outrageously. "However, given Liz's steadily increasing levels of aggression, I can only hope that we get rescued tomorrow and she can get some nicotine in her."

Liz blinked at him, deflating. "You actually want me to smoke?"

He sighed and loosened his tie, slouching. "Yes, because I want to live. Eighteen years of life would be a pitiable span for a god."

"Hrmpf," was all Liz said, but she looked pacified and stopped burning holes into the couch with her Playboy lighter, much to everyone's relief.

It was merely the calm before the storm, though, and later that night, when Black Star accidentally melted Mr. Flippy when moving some logs in the fireplace, Pattie's incandescent rage meant that the next morning, when the hapless bus driver finally struggled his way up the icy road, he slid immediately to a skidding stop, gaping at the smoking remnants of the cabin before him.

The refrigerator and the oven were both out in the snow, he noted first, locking his doors. The snow was trodden down with what appeared to be the footprints of an army, and oddly enough, several pairs of scanty, lacy female panties were waving gently from a tree branch stabbed into the charred roof of the cabin. The driver pressed his face gingerly against the window of his van, squinting, and then jumped when the crumpled bluish heap at the base of the faux flagpole began to stir.

Then someone tapped on his window; this time the poor driver let loose a girlish scream that he hadn't even known his vocal cords were capable of making. "Hey," said the white-haired, red-eyed demon currently staring at him. "Listen, where the fucking goddamn hell have you been? Like, I know it's been snowing like crazy, but seriously!"

The blood-red stains in the demon's hair had the driver double-checking his locks, but it was the sharp zig-zag teeth that did him in. He fainted mid-shriek and slumped over sideways.

Soul regarded the bus driver sourly. Of course this would happen. "Is anyone else still conscious?" he shouted, turning to the cabin.

Black Star struggled upright on the roof, clutching the branch that was proudly bearing Maka's pilfered panties. "Arrrr, matey!" he roared, obviously still severely concussed. "I've got me booty right there, I have!" He pointed through the ruined roof at Tsubaki— who was lying comatose on the scorched couch, clutching several cans of whipped cream for dear life— and collapsed again, toppling the flagpole as he went; Maka's green thong wafted gently through the smoke like some kind of mythical bird and came to rest atop the antennae of the resort bus.

Soul stared at it numbly, prodding at his broken shoulder— wrapped in a rough sling made, horrifyingly, of Kid's boxers— and tried desperately to find the deeper meaning in the destruction all around him. Maybe it was a sign from the universe that he should move to Switzerland. That was a peaceful country, right? Surely there would be no vicious meisters there, waiting to pummel him with books and bruise his innocent nipples. Maybe he should start sneaking Xanax into her coffee, or something. Maybe he should stop caring about his image and just wear head-to-toe camouflage so that he could disappear whenever his insane friends started rampaging.

Mostly, though, he took Maka's delicately flapping underwear as a sign that he shouldn't take her home to meet his parents quite yet.


End file.
